TENURE OF KINGS.

1. If men within themselves would be governed by reason, and not generally give up their understanding to a double tyranny, of custom from without, and blind affections within, they would discern better what it is to favour and uphold the tyrant of a nation. But being slaves within doors, no wonder that they strive so much to have the public state conformably governed to the inward vicious rule, by which they govern themselves. For indeed none can love freedom heartily, but good men the rest love not freedom, but licence; which never hath more scope, or more indulgence than under tyrants. Hence is it that tyrants are not oft offended, nor stand much in doubt of bad men, as being all naturally servile; but in whom virtue and true worth most is eminent, them they fear in earnest, as by right their masters; against them lies all their hatred and suspicion. Consequently neither do bad men hate tyrants, but have been always readiest, with the falsified names of loyalty and obedience, to colour over their base compliances.

2. And although sometimes for shame, and when it comes to their own grievances, of purse

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especially, they would seem good patriots, and side with the better cause, yet when others for the deliverance of their country endued with fortitude and heroic virtue, to fear nothing but the curse written against those "that do the work of the Lord negligently," would go on to remove, not only the calamities and thraldoms of a people, but the roots and causes whence they spring; straight these men, and sure helpers at need, as if they hated only the miseries, but not the mischiefs, after they have juggled and paltered with the world, bandied and borne arms against their king, divested him, disanointed him, nay, cursed him all over in their pulpits, (') and their pamphlets, to the engaging of sincere and real men beyond what is possible or honest to retreat from, not only turn revolters from those principles, which only could at first move them, but lay the strain of disloyalty, and worse, on those proceedings, which are the necessary consequences of their own former actions; nor disliked by themselves, were they managed to the entire advantages of their own faction;

(1) Dr. Zachary Grey, the learned, but partial and prejudiced editor of Hudibras, has, with the diligence of one who performs a labour of love, scraped together in his notes every thing the paltry literature of the Restoration could supply against the preachers and soldiers of the Commonwealth. He, however, corroborates Milton's charge against the Presbyterians, of having at the outset preached a crusade against royalty; but is far from joining with the poet in reprehending their backwardness to "fight it out, mordicus, to death." "The Presbyterians (many of whom, before the war, had got, he observes, into parish churches) preached the people into rebellion; incited them to take up arms and fight the Lord's battles, and destroy the Amalekites, root and branch, hip and thigh, and to root out the wicked from the earth; that

not considering the while that he, toward whom they boasted their new fidelity, counted them accessory; and by those statutes and laws, which they so impotently brandish against others, would have doomed them to a traitor's death for what they have done already.

3. It is true, that most men are apt enough to civil wars and commotions as a novelty, and for a flash hot and active; but through sloth or inconstancy, and weakness of spirit, either fainting ere their own pretences, though never so just, be half attained, or through an inbred falsehood and wickedness, betray, ofttimes to destruction with themselves, men of noblest temper joined with them for causes, whereof they in their rash undertakings were not capable. If God and a good cause give them victory, the prosecution whereof for the most part inevitably draws after it the alteration of laws, change of government, downfall of princes with their families; then comes the task to those worthies, which are the soul of that enterprise, to be sweat and laboured out amidst the throng and

was, in their sense, all that loved the king, the bishops, and the common prayer." "It has been fully made out, that many of the regicides were drawn into the grand rebellion by the direful imprecations of seditious preachers from the pulpit." Dr. South relates that he had it from the mouth of Axtell the regicide, that he, with many more, went into that execrable war, with such a controlling horror upon their spirits, from those public sermons, especially of Brooks and Calamy, that they verily believed they should have been accursed of God for ever, if they had not acted their part in the dismal tragedy, and heartily done the devil's work."-(Sermons, i. 513.) He adds, that "it was the pulpit that supplied the field with swordsmen, and the parliament house with incendiaries."

noses of vulgar and irrational men. Some contesting for privileges, customs, forms, and that old entanglement of iniquity, their gibberish laws, (*) though the badge of their ancient slavery. Others, who have been fiercest against their prince, under the notion of a tyrant, and no mean incendiaries of the war against them, when God, out of his providence and high disposal hath delivered him into the hand of their brethren, on a sudden and in a new garb of allegiance, which their doings have long since cancelled, they plead for him, pity him, extol him, protest against those that talk of bringing him to the trial of justice, (3) which is the sword of God, superior to all mortal things, in whose hand soever by apparent signs his testified will is to put it.

(2) To those who would see a thorough exposure of the absurdity of this "gibberish," we recommend Arthur Symonds's "Mechanics of Law-making,” a work of much merit, and little pretensions, which should be the vade mecum of members of Parliament, committee-men, and the readers of parliamentary debates.

(3) From this passage it is clear that, though the work was not published until after the execution of Charles, it was written previously, to fortify the resolution, perhaps, of the more hesitating and faint-hearted among the tyrannicides, who, to keep them steady to their purpose, may have stood in need of being supported by texts of Scripture. Sir Egerton Brydges, an ardent and an enlightened admirer of Milton, is exceedingly scandalized at the doctrine maintained in this treatise: "the very title," he says, " is surely in the highest degree objectionable, and does not, in these days, require any refutation. To say the truth, this is a part of Milton's character which puzzles me-and no other. This bloodthirstiness does not agree with his sanctity, and other mental and moral qualities," &c. (Life, p. 108.) From this it is evident, that in professing not to comprehend

4. But certainly, if we consider who and what they are, on a sudden grown so pitiful, we may conclude their pity can be no true and Christian commiseration, but either levity and shallowness of mind, or else a carnal admiring of that worldly pomp and greatness, from whence they see him fallen; or rather, lastly, a dissembled and seditious pity, feigned of industry to beget new discord. As for mercy, if it be to a tyrant, under which name they themselves have cited him so oft in the hearing of God, of angels, and the holy church assembled, and there charged him with the spilling of more innocent blood by far than ever Nero did, undoubtedly the mercy which they pretend is the mercy of wicked men; and "their mercies," we read," are cruelties;" hazarding the welfare of a whole nation, to have saved one whom they so oft

this point of the poet's character he is guilty of no hypocrisy ; for, most certainly, nothing could be further from Milton's soul than the brutal thirst of blood here attributed to him, which would have brought down his noble nature to a level with the Murats and Robespierres of the past age. On the contrary, it was his horror for blood, his humane impatience at beholding it shed like water, in civil wars, his dread of seeing re-established a tyranny by which the value of man's life was not properly recognized, that caused him to desire the interference of the "sword of God," to restore peace and freedom to these distracted kingdoms. He was in all things an enthusiast. Had the firm establishment of liberty required the sacrifice, we are fully persuaded there were moments in his glorious career in which he who willingly encountered blindness for the commonwealth would, with equal ardour, have encountered death. It was under the influence of these stern principles that he called for, and justified the execution of Charles; not from any fierce or malignant wish to destroy the man who for so many years had wielded the supreme authority in England.